Clinton Closets Himself With Books, Videotapes for Debate Preparations : Campaign: With his schedule reduced, nominee appears on Donahue show, engaging in testy exchanges over Vietnam War protests.

By CATHLEEN DECKER

Oct. 7, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

NASHVILLE — Boarding his plane en route here from Florida early Tuesday afternoon, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton offered only a cryptic hint of his plans for the countdown days before next week’s series of presidential debates.

“Gonna work,” Clinton said, then bounded up the steps of his plane with a smile.

This is the season known as “debate prep,” where candidates wheel free of their regularly arduous rounds of campaign stops each day, casting their eyes away from voters and television cameras and onto briefing books and videotapes.

They set up fake debate sets at which to practice, hire a quick-minded helper to pose as the opposing candidate and generally try as best they can to replicate the unnerving experience of laying a political career on the line in a nationally televised rhetorical exercise.

Masters of self-confidence most of the time, they now try mightily to underplay the expectations for their performance. Already on Tuesday, Clinton aides were low-balling their man’s chances.

“I don’t think he has to win this debate or any of the debates,” Bruce Lindsey, Clinton’s campaign director, said in a classic bit of pre-debate spin.

Then what does he have to do?

“If he’s able to convey to the American public that he has a plan and a strategy for America, we’ll be successful,” Lindsey said.

The debate preparation season was officially ushered in for Clinton Tuesday, when he took part in only two campaign events before closeting himself for most of the next four days.

The second event, an appearance along with his running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, on the Phil Donahue show, degenerated into a testy exchange between Donahue and Clinton. It occurred when the talk show host suggested that Clinton had played down his involvement in anti-Vietnam War protests for political benefit. During the campaign, actually, Clinton always has made clear his opposition to that war.

Donahue claimed that Clinton had covered up his anti-war passion as part of a pattern of wanting to “impress and be loved by everyone”--a description that drew a heated response from the Arkansas governor.

“You are wrong to ignore my entire public life as you and a lot of others have done and to make up your own characterization of this so you can once again divert people from discussing the things that will affect their lives,” Clinton said.

Donahue also questioned whether Clinton had attended a large anti-war rally in London in 1969. Clinton said he had. Donahue asked if Clinton had attended a 1969 meeting in New England which led to the formation of an anti-war coalition. Clinton said he had been there as well, but that the meeting was a reunion of volunteers from Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign.

Clinton, who has acknowledged attending a few anti-war marches in his youth, eventually took umbrage at Donahue’s accusations. The talk show host acknowledged that his questions, which were delivered in a conspiratorial tone, were asked without benefit of any independent investigation.

“You drew a conclusion that I had somehow tried to have it both ways on the Vietnam War. That’s a load of bull,” said Clinton, who was repeatedly applauded by the audience.

One of the program’s telephone questioners targeted another element of Clinton’s Vietnam history--his draft record--when she asked why he should be President if, as a Los Angeles Times story recently indicated, his family helped to get him out of the Vietnam War draft.

“My family didn’t get me out of anything,” Clinton said, adding that “if you don’t want to vote for me because of that, that’s fine with me.”

“But that won’t have anything to do with the way you’re going to live the day after the election.”

Before flying here for the Donahue taping, Clinton and Gore closed out a two-day Florida bus trip with an address at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where thousands crowded into a central quad to listen.

There, Clinton continued to slam President Bush under cover of defending himself, delivering the sort of half-positive, half-negative message that he has warmed to in recent days. Yet his words took on a more mocking tone than usual, with Clinton deriding Bush as a “poor man” who engaged in “sick name-calling.”

“George Bush has been here the last two days . . . misrepresenting my record,” Clinton said. ‘The poor man even had to make up a television ad and put it on television. He literally put a television ad on which said I’m going to raise taxes on the people.”

Bush partisans in the crowd chanted back at Clinton: “Liar! Liar!”

Later, Clinton added: “The time has come to end all this sick name-calling and division and talk about what we have got to do to lift the spirits of our people. . . . “